arthel: the state of mississippi declaring a state of emergency. people there bracing for heavy rains and storm surge that could trigger massive flooding. joining me on the phone now is mississippi governor phil bryant. governor, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us this afternoon. busy, busy day for you, busy weekend i m sure. if you could first of all tell us what the weather is like now, from your perspective, your biggest concern at this time and come nightfall. as you know, the storm came ashore at about 10:00 a.m., mainland central louisiana, also here on the mississippi gulf coast. heavy rain is our concern. flooding. and this has been something that s been going on in mississippi since february, particularly in the mississippi delta, as we see this storm coming ashore, on the mississippi gulf coast, southwest mississippi, moving up the mississippi river to an already flooded mississippi delta, 540,000 acres under water
island, texas. reporter: the hurricane is making landfall about roughly 100 miles to the south of our location. it looks like texas will escape the mere brunt of the storm. but that is not to say that they weren t scathed by this thing. strong winds have come through here. so strong, we had to shut down some of the bridges that go back to the mainland. on the other side of the intercoastal waterway, we ve got widespread reports of tornadoes dropping down in some places but i ve got to tell you, the city of brownsville was prepared. they did hand out over 60,000 sand bags in the area. they ve got, again, shelter supplies for roughly 2,000 families and governor rick perry declared 19 different counties in texas disaster areas and deployed 1,900 troops to the area. they really did dodge a bullet. two years ago they weren t as lucky when hurricane dolly made landfall. less than a mile from our present location. that was also a category 2 storm, came through the island.
other. you don t have a central command literally or figuratively. we talked about general honorare on the show before. i m not an elected official. i can say no, i don t think he s up to the job. this is a guy the coast guard shuts down the skimmers, the state itself sits down there till they count life vests. vacuum cleaning. speaking of general honorare, he said we re stuck on stupid. the federal government and bp are stuck on stupid and there s still not a sense of urgency. and now hurricanes are churning away and they will be all summer long. there s very little break. julia, john, appreciate you being on. thank you. update on breaking news we ve been following. hurricane alex, making landfall short time ago. winds over 100 miles an hour. we ll have a live update, take a look at where the storm is headed next. also ahead, breaking story
at times the water was up to three feet in many of the streets farther back. we had an opportunity earlier to make our way up and down these roadways. there has been quite a bit of flooding here on the island. as soon as one feeder band comes through in fact, over four inches at some places. as soon as the water begins to recede, an additional feeder band comes through, bringing with it heavy rainfall, strong winds. damage to some of the buildings has been fae fairly impressive. power outages have been popping up across the landscape, really no surprise when you have a tropical storm or tropical system like this coming through. hurricane force winds closer to the center. out in our area, we ve had winds topping 60 miles per hour, strong hurricane, cat 2 came very close. we ll talk about that, coming up. let s send it back to you, anderson? reynolds, thank you very much. let s bring in chad myers. this one has gotten very big, very fast. it did. it got into some very warm water
we re following right now the first hurricane of the season. hurricane alex. there it is, upgraded to a dangerous cat 2 in the process of coming ashore. chad myers is monitoring late developments from the weather center. we begin with reynolds wolf in the thick of it on south padre island, texas. reporter: the hurricane is making landfall about roughly 100 miles to the south of our location. it looks like texas will escape the mere brunt of the storm. but that is not to say that they weren t scathed by this thing. strong winds have come through here. so strong, we had to shut down some of the bridges that go back to the mainland. on the other side of the intercoastal waterway, we ve got widespread reports of tornadoes dropping down in some places but i ve got to tell you, the city of brownsville was prepared. they did hand out over 60,000 sand bags in the area. they ve got, again, shelters supplied for roughly 2,000 families and governor rick perry declared 19 different counties in